Someone is asking:
Where can I find “positive” ATF videos?
…
Raw or not, “positive” videos seem nearly impossible to find for the ATF (and even for FEMA,
for that matter).
You have to have positive acts by the ATF before you can have positive videos of it.
Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California says, “It’s none of government’s flippin’ business what guns I own, or why I own them.”
Of course the Brady Campaign and their supporters disagree. From the same article we find the claim
“It will make your community safer, and make officers safer,” by Juliet Leftwich of Legal Community Against Violence, which co-sponsored the bill.
Is that all it takes? A claim of increased safety? We know there is no data supporting a claim that weapons restrictions of any type have ever made the average person safer. But suppose there was. Would that be sufficient grounds for tracking and licensing people that engage in activities that sometimes result in injury or even death?
If that were true then government paperwork could be justified for every instance of sexual intercourse. Do you want to live in a world like that?
Just think of the benefits! It would make it easier for health officials to track down all carriers of sexual transmitted diseases. Shouldn’t we make it easier for government officials?
If those that advocate government tracking of gun and ammunition were consistent they would advocate the same for sexual intercourse. But of course registration and tracking of guns can no more reduce violent crime than requiring paperwork for each act of sexual intercourse would help apprehend rapists. And more importantly because we have a specifically enumerated right to keep and bear arms it is even less of their business to track our exercise of that right than it is to track our sexual activities.
People on both sides of the issue sometimes attribute evil intent to their opponents. While the evidence is overwhelming that evil intent exists in some cases (see also here) I am of the opinion the majority of the anti-gun people have good intentions. They typically are ignorant and/or have difficulty distinguishing between truth and falsity. This doesn’t mean that their actions don’t enable or cause evil results. Hell is paved with good intentions and all that.
It could be that my sample is biased but examples where anti-gun people acknowledge pro-gun people have good intentions appear to be non-existent. Typically they attribute NRA actions as benefiting the gun manufactures and it being “all about the money”. But many examples, such as the cartoon above, exist which claim the NRA markets guns to kids and works to arm criminals.
This systematic and persistent attribution of evil intent to all gun owners and organizations is no different than attributing evil intent to blacks who demand repeal of curfew laws and laws prohibiting socializing between the races or gays who wish to adopt children.
The VPC does not hide it’s belief that gun owners and gun organizations are evil. But the Brady Campaign does not do this. They are much more moderate in their rhetoric and probably as result of this are a much larger organization. They are aware that extremism in pursuit of their goals is a loosing strategy. While I find it telling that extremism in defense of liberty does not suffer from the same handicap that is a topic for another post (perhaps Lyle would like to take this up).
I can’t help but think that asking anti-gun people what they think the motivation is for pro-gun people would be revealing. I suspect asking them this question would cause them to confront beliefs which are clearly not supported by the evidence.
Any right or freedom not worth fighting for is but a temporary privilege.
Sheriff Richard I. Mack
From My Cold Dead Fingers–Why America Needs Guns, Third Edition (“Final Chapter”), page 212.
[Not only must it be worth fighting for but people must actually go out and do the fighting and voting.–Joe]
After reading Rob Reed’s article I followed the link to Open Secrets and the Brady fund raising info. As Robb noted the other day (but I failed to follow up on) the Brady Campaign has had just one donor this year who gave them $2500.
If they turn off all the lights, turn the heat down really low during the winter, and only use enough air-conditioning to keep the computers from overheating that might be enough to pay the electric bill. I don’t what kind of guns you own, that’s funny.
You know what is even funnier? That one donor…I know who it is. Open Secrets lists them as Michael Wolkowitz.
That name… where have I seen that name before? Could it be some crime family boss wanting to keep their victims unarmed? Or maybe a foreign nation diplomat, the Taliban, or some other subversive? Naw! Too easy. It has to be someone else.
Oh yeah! Now I remember! It is the Brady Campaign Board Chair.
I don’t care who you are. That’s funny right there!
This is a little different than most suicide watches. In this one they are in the process and we are just watching it happen.
After it completes we should all go to the wake. I’ll sign up to bring my famous cookies and maybe my chemistry set.
Had it been “U.S. Constitution” and “Bill of Rights” instead of “gun” and “Smith and thy Wesson” there would be some truth in the cartoon and it would apply to a large percentage of gun owners and NRA members. As it is it only reflects the bigoted, imaginary world of the artist.
When I have been interviewed by foreign journalists, even German ones, they usually start off by asking why multiple-victim public shootings are such an American problem. And of course, they are astonished when I remind them of the attacks in their own countries and point out that this is not an American problem, it is a universal problem, but with a common factor: The attacks occur in public places where civilians are banned from carrying guns.
John R. Lott Jr.
June 11, 2010
Gun Control and Mass Murder
[H/T to Dave Hardy.
I would have said “private citizens” instead of “civilians” but he still gets the point across.–Joe]
I’ve been collecting gun cartoons and it’s time to start sharing. Most come from the dark ages of the mid and late 1990s.
Perhaps this will help bring people up to speed on why I think anti-gun people are bigots. Would this cartoon get published in your paper if the target were black, Jewish, or homosexual?
One of the books on my shelf is How to Lie with Statistics. I found it very useful to help me identify the errors in the reports from anti-gun people. They apparently subscribe to the claim by the author, “A well-wrapped statistic is better than Hitler’s “big Lie”; it misleads,
yet it cannot be pinned on you.”
For example NYC Mayor Bloomberg reported the other day:
The report shows that total crime decreased by 5.1 percent in New York City
during 2009, outpacing national trends. Murders fell by 9.9 percent, compared to
7.2 percent nationwide. According to NYPD Compstat data, crime is down an
additional 1.5 percent citywide for the first five months of the year when
compared to 2009 levels
What is not said is that (as pointed out by Linoge) NYC uses a biased sample for the statistics. They deliberately do not report all the crime.
Of course that is such a brute force approach it doesn’t take any great skill or reading of a book to accomplish.
The Brady Campaign and Violence Policy Center are generally a little more subtle in their statistical lies.
As I wrote in my last paragraph in my post Alan Gura v. Paul Helmke Helmke and company talk about “gun violence” and concentrate on the “one component of violence”. The unmentioned assumption is that violent crime committed with guns is independent of all violent crime. If this were true then you would expect that one could, conceivably, eliminate all the guns in society and have a decrease in violent crime. This isn’t what happens in real life. It tends to be true that the rate of crimes committed with firearms goes down when there are exceedingly strict restriction in place. But other violent crime has a strong tendency to increase when those restrictions occur. The presumed reasons for this are: 1) If criminals cannot get access to a firearm they substitute a different weapons and; 2) Potential victims are disarmed which encourages predators because of the reduced risk of getting hurt and/or caught.
The VPC feeds the press information on “gun death rates” and they eat it up. But the VPC appears to include suicides and justifiable homicide by police and private citizens! According to their numbers it is just as bad for a wheelchair bound elderly woman to kill the man who broke into her home to rape her as it for the home invader to kill an entire family including the toddlers. And they ignore violent crime in general.
Their statistics tells us nothing about whether places with strict gun laws make the average person safer. They do tell us where we can live if you would rather die by being beaten to death than a gunshot wound and where violent predators can find disarmed prey. One should conclude that VPC is more appropriately named the Violent Predator Compendium.
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Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
June 9, 2010
http://www.bradycenter.org/donate/events/dc
[The link used to go to this content. Searching for Helen Thomas on their site still yields the link above but the page has been removed. I wonder why?
Since they seem to have lost the web page I’m pleased to offer it back to them and even host it on my site at no charge.
The Brady Campaign–The 21st Century social equivalent of the KKK.
Update: Their web page about honoring Helen Thomas works again. Sebastian speculates.
If I were in management of an organization that were embarrassed by someone we honored by giving them an award I think I would do just the opposite of what they did. I think I would leave the web page (the Internet is forever once it hits the tubes–you can’t take it back so why try?) but update it with a statement that you were unaware (assuming that is true) of the persons embarrassing beliefs and have revoked the award.
They appear to have tried to just hide the evidence which is the wrong thing to do. Will they do the right thing now? They haven’t in the past. Let’s hope they continue to fumble along and further confirm my claim they are ordinary bigots who are not ashamed of their beliefs and the people they associate with.–Joe]
Their ignorance is pitiful — their lives have been too easy. Had they
experienced Dachau, they would have a better idea of how precious freedom is.
These leftist should leave America. These Sarah Brady types must be educated to
understand that because we have an armed citizenry, that a dictatorship has not
yet happened in America. These anti-gun fools are more dangerous to Liberty than
street criminals or foreign spies.
Theodore Haas
Full Interview with Holocaust Survivor, Theodore Haas
[I was reminded of this quote by The Brady Campaign connection with anti-Semite Helen Thomas.–Joe]
AmericanMercenary, a U.S. army solider, gives us data on the effectiveness of .50 caliber rifle fire on aircraft.
That should put the myth propagated by the VPC and Brady Campaign to rest. At least for rational people.
Privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States … are chiefly defined in the first eight amendments to the Constitution of the United States… . These eight articles … never were limitations upon the power of the states until made so by the Fourteenth Amendment.
John Bingham
1871
Bingham was a primary architect of the 14th Amendment.
[This is something to keep in mind as later this month, after being more than 140 years overdue, the Second Amendment is finally acknowledged as a barrier to state and local governments infringement on a specific enumerated right. Bigots ignore the spirit and the intent of the law. We have a legal system. Not a justice system.
Although I haven’t read all of Alan Gura’s briefs so maybe he did use this but if he didn’t it would seem to me he overlooked powerful support for his approach to incorporation of the Second Amendment.
I found this while reading The Gun Rights War, page 75.–Joe]
It was so obvious I didn’t bother to immediately point it out. It was just a week ago that I posted links to the bigots hanging out together (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here are direct links). Their website still has this page up with pictures from their annual event (which, BTW, wouldn’t be big enough for the Boomershoot dinner we have every year).
So many anti-gun people try to paint gun owners as white supremacists, anti-Semitic bigots and now the “the nation’s largest, non-partisan, grassroots organization leading the fight to prevent gun violence” is embarrassed by having the person they just honored show her true colors by saying the Jews in Israel should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back to Germany and Poland.
Had this been the NRA who just honored such a person at their annual meeting the connection would have been on the front page of nearly every leftist web site. It would be on television and reporters would be camped out at Wayne LaPierre’s house trying to make the connection all the more damaging.
What do we see now that it was one of the left’s own that is the anti-Semitic bigot and was honored as “legendary” by one of the left’s favorite causes? All I’m picking up on is a few on our side (Sebastian and Kurt).
I would like to remind those that support the Brady Campaign that their silence implies agreement with the Brady’s alliance with Thomas and her bigoted view. But I already knew you guys were bigots. This just makes it more obvious to the rest of the world.
One of the most interesting projects I worked on altered my perceptions of the civil rights movement and tested my convictions about nonviolence as an effective form of direct action. The Coalition sought to rebut claims by gun rights activists that gun control is historically racist; and violent, armed action is the method by which African Americans obtained important rights.
While researching the Deacons for Defense and Justice (DDJ), a small movement of men that took up arms to protect their communities in southern states between 1964-1968, I learned what it must have been like to stand up to a violent mob. In this case, that mob was the Ku Klux Klan. During this time, advocates of violence were much more prevalent than I had been taught. Student groups like the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) became much more militant during the 1960s, especially after seeing the terror of the Klan in the south.
Yet I also came to understand that while it may have been necessary for some African Americans to arm themselves to protect the lives of those they loved, it really was nonviolence that gained national attention and helped thrust the civil rights movement ahead.
Caitlin Rosser
June 7, 2010
Former intern for Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
Holding Fire, Finding Peace
[If I’m reading this right she learned the same lesson she would have had I been her mentor instead of someone at an anti-gun organization. Non-violence is the way of everyday life but the ability and willingness to deliver violence in the defense of innocent life under unusual circumstances is what makes it possible to live a life of relatively free of violence.
I have to wonder how successful she was in being able to achieve the coalition’s goal to “rebut the claims by gun rights activists.” I did a search on the CSGV website for her name without getting any hits. One might conclude that means she didn’t come up with the desired answer. She appears to be a smart girl so maybe she figured things out even while interning with a well meaning but extremely misguided organization.
After spending four months with the CSGV she has now been an intern at the U.S. Department of Justice for two months. I wonder if she is an advocate for non-violence there as well. I don’t expect that would go over too well with those that have to make contact with those that regularly prey on the innocent.
One might even imagine that if she continues to learn the lessons that life has to offer at the DOJ she might next get a job, virtually next door, at NRA headquarters. She would fit right in with nearly all the NRA PR people I have met, female, smart, and blond (I said “nearly” — Danielle probably isn’t considered a blond).–Joe]
Of the four wars in my lifetime none came about because the U.S. was too strong.
Ronald Reagan
[This afternoon on my way back to my hidden underground bunker in the Seattle area I listened to A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell. Kevin gives a more complete review than I would ever consider but one thing in the book jumped out at me that reminded me of this Reagan quote. In the unconstrained vision nations enter into war because of misunderstandings many of which are because one side or both became convinced that their neighbor was preparing to go to war against them. Hence, in the eyes of those who adhere to the unconstrained vision, one of the ways to prevent war is to disarm.
As Kevin points out those of the unconstrained persuasion are as much or more interested in intent than in hard data. Does that remind you of any politicians you know?
In the unconstrained vision the definitions of the most basic words have different meanings from those of a constrained vision viewpoint. Some definitions are not merely different–they are the complete opposite (for example see the video I linked to here). This is why, for them, “freedom” and/or “economic justice” can entail forced redistribution of wealth without a hint of irony.
For them, criminals can be understood and reformed. It was the fault of society/poverty/”economic-injustice” which creates criminals and by fixing those problems and taking away the tools of their trade there will be less (or zero) crime. As an example just last month Paul Helmke said gun violence is one component of the total violence. This, of course, presumes that violent crime committed with firearms is totally independent of other types of violent crime. It assumes there will be no substitution of other weapons if firearms are less available (and with the victims disarmed firearms are less likely to be needed by large predators). In their minds people like Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer, and Richard Kuklinski (now there was one scary SOB–Ted Bundy was a pussy cat compared to him) apparently would not come into being.
That line of thought brought me to gun control and back to Reagan’s quote. What Reagan said in regards to war also applies to gun ownership and criminals. No violent criminal or political tyrant committed his crimes because his victims were too strong.–Joe]
According to GunPolicy.org in the U.S. there are about 270 million guns in private hands, about 3 million under military control, and about 900 thousand owned by the police.
I find the ratio of 69:1 appropriate odds.
Public servants should keep this in mind if they entertain thoughts of changing the relationship.
Yesterday I posted a quote from someone opposed to open (and I would imagine any type of) carry. He was responding to someone else in the comments to a newspaper article:
“How many open carry citizens have committed crimes with their weapons?
Answer – none”.You are incorrect. Open carry laws make it easy for psychos to tote
around LOADED weapons, which are responsible for a lot of the crime and gun
deaths each year. The law may be designed for the “law abiding” citizen, but if
you think only “law abiding” citizens utilize the law you are an idiot.
It is my belief that we are so frequently exposed to irrational and nonsensical thinking and behaviors that we frequently cannot see it for what it is. We accept it as normal and attempt to confront them on their own territory using their own “rules”. This is like mud wrestling with a pig. They are going to be an extremely slippery opponent, you are unlikely to win, and even if you do there is no hope of any dignity or great reward.
I didn’t notice that I had ignored this guy’s subterfuge until sometime after I had posted it and rather than update the post I decided to see if anyone else noticed and pointed it out in the comments. About a 1000 people have seen that quote here and no one has said anything about what the guy did. I doubt that he himself realized what he did. It is what these people do naturally. Their thinking process is so messed up that it just comes out.
The two points that need to be made are:
This second point is very important. A potentiality is not an actuality.*
For the most part when we debate against gun control (or socialism for that matter) we use actual facts. We accuse them of using emotionalism but it goes deeper than that. They frequently argue about “what could happen”. When they do this there is almost no limit to what conclusions will be reached.
They end up arguing that .50 caliber “sniper rifles” can bring airplanes down out of the sky. To the best of my knowledge there has never been a case of a semi-auto or bolt action .50 caliber rifle taking down an airplane. Potentiality versus actuality.
They end up arguing criminals will buy guns at gun shows with “no questions asked”. Criminals obtain their firearms at gun shows less than 1% of the time. Potentiality versus actuality.
They end up arguing if you carry a gun it can be taken away from you and used against you. Defending ones-self with a gun results in less injury to the defender than any other course of action. Potentiality versus actuality.
They end up arguing that if there were strict, “common sense” gun laws in place crime would go down. At the very best the facts show heavy restrictions on private citizen access to firearms is not positively correlated with an increase in crime. Potentiality versus actuality.
Keep your eyes and ears open and your brain working. Don’t let them get away with arguing potentialities. Make them argue actualities. A potentiality is not an actuality.
I got pulled over today for having studded tires. No big deal there. I’ve been meaning to change them out, but it seems I always had something else to occupy my attention. Besides; it wasn’t but a few weeks ago I needed them up in the mountains. We had snow right here in mid May too.
Strangely, the cop asks me if I have any guns in the vehicle. This has never happened to me before in Idaho, and only once in Washington, in all my nearly 40 years of driving, even though I usually have a bandolier of .30-30 ammo hanging on the headrest for all the world to see.
“Well, yeah. Certainly.”
“Where are they.”
“Let’s see. I have to think about this. There’s an AR in the back seat, a 9 mm pistol in the back seat, and one on my hip. For which I have a permit” I added. (I’d forgotten about the Mark II auto pistol in its soft case on the front seat) That’s about the minimum. I usually have more guns with me, because sometimes I like to go shooting after work.
“Oh, alright” he says. Now, I would have been glad to show him the permit, but he didn’t ask. He just walked back to his cruiser. I figured he didn’t much care and would rather proceed checking my record and writing up the ticket. Wrong! Fail!
He was back there forEVER. I’ve never had a stop take half this long. Eventually a second cruiser shows up, and the second cop gets out and has a LONG conversation with the first one. I’m really beginning to wonder what they could possibly be discussing. Who do they think I am? What do they think I’ve done? WFT? I have no record, my driving record is pristine. Man, studs in June must be one hell of a big deal!
By now I can feel the adrenaline coming on, ’cause both cops are approaching my pickup, one on either side, cautiously, like they are afraid I’m going to start shooting any second, or like they’re getting ready to make an arrest of an “armed suspect”. I’m half expecting to see a SWAT van tear around the corner at this point, they way they’re acting.
Understand that this whole time I was nothing but peaches and cream, putting forth my most polite and straight-forward mannerism, and keeping my hands on the wheel or in full view every second.
Turns out they “had a hard time finding [my] carry permit” in my home town in Washington. Several years ago, the rules were changed such that you now must apply for your permit, and any renewals, in your home town police dept., and apparently they had a hard time getting hold of my local guys, or my local guys had a hard time keeping their records straight. I don’t know which, but several of these fellows need a little talkin’ to.
For one thing, if I were a real threat, would I have declared the pistol on my hip? I think not. Yet these guys never did relax. Not even after everything was cleared up. They were polite and all, but wow– very nervous, and it seemed the more I tried to be all polite and accommodating and chatty, the more nervous they got. The first guy is the only one I spoke with, and he acted plenty nice and all. No complaint there.
For another thing; really, if you are so risk averse that you have to call for backup because I have guns just like most people around here, maybe you should be in another line of work. I know it’s tough, but that requires a certain personality and the understanding that sometimes shit happens and that you’re willing to accept the risks. We all do that for example every time we get behind the wheel. Lots of people we know have been is serious vehicle accidents, but we’re not at DefCon One all the time, like these two cops were today. For another; my family name is something of a local institution here in Moscow. We’ve had a downtown business here, right next door to the cop shop, since 1990, and in this town since 1978. Our ads have been on the radio here every day. For years. My name is the name of the business. This is a small town. If you’re afraid of me you must be afraid of your own shadow. Besides, if you REALLY believe in the second amendment, you wouldn’t be worried about whether I have a permit to exercise my rights, except as a formality or an afterthought.
Now I know more what it must be like to be caught “driving while black”. “Driving while armed” can be much the same, even in Idaho it seems.
Now I don’t want to hear from anyone about how tough the cop job is, or about how many cops get into dangerous situations as fast as lightening. I know. Sorry. You know that when you apply. There are those who can handle it, those who probably shouldn’t be there, and others who just need a little talkin’ to once in a while, to keep them on track. These two were just a bit off track, and it Does. Not. Help. Anything.
That being said; I was pulled over by ID State Police a few months ago, for not signaling a lane change, and he was cool as a cucumber. No ticket. Just wanted to talk about it and check the equipment. Huge contrast.